The present disclosure relates to the field of body-coupled communication, in particular to an apparatus and a method for body-coupled communication.
Body-Coupled Communication (BCC) is an emerging near field communication technology that uses the human (or animal) body to propagate data by wireless communication over the body between devices that are on or in close proximity with the body. The BCC technology has several important characteristics that make it particularly suitable for a wide range of wearable consumer and medical devices. For example, it can address the needs that the current communication approaches struggle with: ease-of-use, privacy, security, high data rate with high energy efficiency
Current BCC devices use couplers that for some applications offer a good performance while for other applications can lead to an excessive use of energy, either to transmit higher signal levels, or to detect very low signal levels. On the transmitter side, higher signal levels ensure better signal propagation and higher immunity to noise and interference. The signal levels that the transmitter can generate are typically limited by the available supply voltage. With complicated techniques like voltage boosting, the signal levels can be increased (e.g. doubled). The voltage boosting however, is associated with extra energy consumption and complicated circuit implementation. An optimal coupling of the signals from the transmitter to the environment via the couplers will results in an optimal usage of the energy. On the receiver side, varying signal conditions are typically accommodated via variable gain amplifier which gain is adapted to the strength of the incoming signal. The adaptation of the gain requires control loop that constantly monitors the signal strength and adapts the gain accordingly. This loop introduces higher complexity, cost and power consumption. Further, the operation of loops is associated with reaction time constant which in case of slow response will lead to overload and loss of data. It is desired to reduce power consumption in BCC while still providing reliable communication in various situation.